October 23

Adam Zagajewski

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading: 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

A major figure of the Polish New Wave literary movement of the early 1970s and of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement of the 1980s, Adam Zagajewski’s most recent books in English are Eternal Enemies (2008) and Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002), nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. His other collections of poetry include Mysticism for Beginners (1999), Canvas (1991) and Tremor: Selected Poems (1985). His books of essays and literary sketches are Two Cities: On Exile, History and the Imagination, and Solidarity, Solitude: Essays." He divides his time between Krakow and Chicago, where he teaches at the University of Chicago.

November 11

Carolyn Forché

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading: 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

Poet and translator Carolyn Forché’s prize-winning volumes of poetry include Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1982), The Angel of History (1994), Blue Hour (2003) the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness (1994). Her work on behalf of human rights in El Salvador and elsewhere is a major focus of her poetry, much of which depicts the terrible cruelties inflicted on children victimized by the war. A recipient of three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, Forché now holds the Chair of the Visiting Professor of Poetics at Georgetown University.

November 20

Clayton Eshleman

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading: 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

César Vallejo, born in 1892 in Peru, released his first book of poetry, Los heraldos negros, in 1919, but is perhaps most famous for Trilce (1922), a book of poetry containing seventy-seven poems that are considered his most complex, radical work. His opposition to dictatorial rule in Peru led to a lifelong exile in Europe, where he continued to call for social justice and human equality.

Known for his work as a poet, editor, and translator, Clayton Eshleman has been awarded the National Book Award and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His career-long effort translating Vallejo from Spanish culminated in Eshleman’s 2006 publication, The Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo, A Bilingual Edition.

January 22

Li-Young Lee

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

Li-Young Lee is the author of four critically acclaimed books of poetry, his most recent being Behind My Eyes (2008). His earlier collections are Rose (1986), winner of the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award; The City in Which I Love You (1991), the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and a memoir, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995), which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Lee's honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lannan Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as the Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation. Born to Chinese parents in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee now lives in Chicago.

FEBRUARY 3

Henrietta Rose-Innes

Reading and Reception: 5:00 p.m. Old North 205

Henrietta Rose-Innes of South Africa is the winner of the 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing for a short story, "Poison." She has published two novels, Shark’s Egg (2000) and The Rock Alphabet (2004) and is writing a third. She currently works as a literary editor and TV/film scriptwriter and script editor, and tutors a seminar in Writing for TV at the University of Cape Town. Ms. Rose-Innes is the 2008-2009 Caine Prize Writer in Residence at Georgetown University.

February 19

Rod Smith & Marjorie Welish

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading: 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

Rod Smith's latest collection, Deed, was published by The University of Iowa Press in the fall of 2007. He is also the author of Music or Honesty, Poèmes de l'araignée (France), In Memory of My Theories, The Good House, The Boy Poems, and Protective Immediacy. A CD, Fear the Sky, came out from Narrow House Recordings in 2005.

Marjorie Welish is the author of several books of poetry, including Word Group (2004), Isle of the Signatories (2008) and a limited edition collaboration with James Siena, Oaths? Questions? (Granary Books 2009). Ms. Welish has received grants and fellowships for her poetry from Brown University, Cambridge University, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her The Annotated ‘Here’ and Selected Poems was an Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist and a Village Voice Best Book of the year. A conference on her writing and art, produced at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, resulted in the book, Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish.

March 3

Ciarán Carson

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

Ciarán Carson, a musician and poet, has published two books on Irish traditional music, The Pocket Guide to Traditional Music (1986) and Last Night’s Fun (1997). His nine collections of poetry include Belfast Confetti (1989), which received the Irish Times Literature Prize; First Language (1993), which was awarded the T.S. Eliot prize; and Breaking News (2003). His translation of Dante’s Inferno appeared in 2002 and a translation of the Old Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailgne was published in 2007. Since 2003 he has been Professor of Poetry and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the 2008- 2009 Lannan Distinguished Writer in Residence at Georgetown University.

March 17

Eileen Myles & Nalo Hopkinson

Seminar: 5:30 p.m. ICC 462
Reading: 8:00 p.m. Copley Formal Lounge

Eileen Myles is a poet, playwright and performance artist, who is also currently writing a novel called The Inferno and an opera called Hell. Her books include Skies, (2001), Cool for You (2000), School of Fish, (1997) and Chelsea Girls (1994). Her plays are Joan of Arc: a spiritual entertainment, Patriarchy, a play, Feeling Blue, Pts. 1, 2 & 3, Modern Art, My Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, and a solo performance piece, Leaving New York. She is a frequent contributor to Art in America, The Village Voice, The Nation and other periodicals, and is a Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego.

Nalo Hopkinson’s science fiction and fantasy novels include Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), which received Locus Award for Best New Writer; Midnight Robber (2000), nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel; Skin Folk (2001), which won the World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic; and The Salt Roads, which received the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Also an editor of four fiction anthologies, Hopkinson lives in Canada, and teaches writing at various programs around the world.

March 30-March 31

'CRY HAVOC!' Poetry of War and Remembrance, 1968 - 2008
Lannan Symposium & Festival 2009

When the story of the massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, in March 1968 was finally revealed in the press, everything changed. Public opinion swung against the war, activism raged, and America began to withdraw from a fight that had lost all legitimacy. Poets, artists and activists remind us that all war is a failure of the moral imagination, and teach us through their language and social practice to guard against forgetting. Poetry restores to us the horror of conflict and offers paths toward its transcendence. Poets, critics, journalists and visual artists will converge to recall the lessons of war over this violent half century, and to plot new strategies for peaceful futures.